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Any particular damascus or maker you are looking at? Damascus can be as varied as varieties of jelly, grains of sand etc....hard to say, but in short, no, they are not the sharpest you can buy, there are too many variables.

Any particular damascus or maker you are looking at? Damascus can be as varied as varieties of jelly, grains of sand etc....hard to say, but in short, no, they are not the sharpest you can buy, there are too many variables.

Aah ok.

Not really sure was just interested because it was something i heard a while ago during my catering course but i did get told quite a lot of rubbish during that course!
Also just out of interest what is the sharpest brand of knife you can get?
Would it be all about the steel type?

"Sharpest" can be different things and people around here are happy to get quite technical about what exactly they mean. It can be the best edge to cut tomatoes in a kitchen, or it can be the edge that is sharpened at the most acute angle, or the one that holds that "almost as acute angle" the longest, etc. For a more layman answer, a good sushi slicer (yanagiba) from a reputable maker (there's a lot, but you won't find them in big box type stores in the USA) would be your most common "sharpest" knife.

If you're looking for personal recommendations on a new kitchen knife, then we can certainly point you in the right direction. If you just want a theoretical answer, I think I've read somewhere that graphene can produce the finest edge that man can make at the moment. Don't quote me on it though (and it would be useless for anything in a kitchen

I think most would agree apparent sharpness when cutting food has much more to do with the grind of the knife than the steel that it is made of. Most knives with a good - fantastic grind and well heat treated steel will take a great edge and "feel" sharp based on how well it moves through food. I think Konosuke knives are a good example of this. They have a good grind( nice n' thin ) and are available in a variety of steels that all take great edges. Provided they have all been sharpened the same most people would be hard pressed to tell the difference initially when cutting with the white #2, HD, or stainless steel Konos. Leaving the decision to be made based on other variables: Edge retention, ease of sharpening, reactivity, toughness etc. Even my "dull" konosukes when I had them would cut better than my wusthoff on its sharpest day simply due to the improvement in grind over the pudgy german knife.

Damascus is pretty. It does not provide better characteristics in the kitchen.

There is a minute difference in retention of cutting power(not edge retention) for outdoor knives, if the damascus is patterned on the edge finely. The steels will wear at different rates and keep cutting after the first ones wears down because the teeth will remain(Imagine an edge wearing down into a little saw). The kind of edge left behind is waaaay underpolished for a kitchen knife, so it would not help, and would just feel dull.